The Solar System: September, AD 15605

[töff]

I think what I will do is make names for boatloads of Kuiper & Oort & Transneptune objects. If "Makemake" was previously 2005 FY9 (or whatever), then ya gotta figure by the 16th millennium they'll probably have named all the objects I am gonna show on my map. Some of them might even be gone by then. This will let me escape from worrying too much about the objects that exist right now, or in the near future.

Meanwhile ... new render attached ... Thanks for the panorama link but it's not the seams I worry about, it's the pinched poles ... and I think by adjusting the sun I've made it irrelevant.

[töff]

Argh, what did I do to poor Pluto's map? LOL! First he's bumped out of planethood, and then I mirrored a third of his terrain. Poor guy. You'd think the Lord Of The Underworld would deserve better.

[töff]

Quickie update.

First, modelling the planets has turned into one of those time-sucking subprojects, especially the ring systems. I have a proven, workable procedure, though, so it's just a matter of processing all the numerical data and various image maps. If I can, I'll step through Uranus or Neptune, for blog/tute purposes. I did Saturn, though, as I think you've seen. Working Jupiter now.

Second, I have decided that I've just about had enough of trying to procure real-world object rosters and ephemera. It's the far future, so (a) mankind will have exerted a lot of energy into naming or even removing some existing objects, and making new objects; and (b) nature herself does horrible things to planetary rosters, so if (when) somebody next finds some new dirty snowball behind Sedna, I really won't care that it's not on my map, because it can just be assumed that the snowball was melted down for minerals, or got hit by an Armageddon asteroid, or whatever. It is time to FICTIONALIZE! which is both easier than research and far more fun. So there.

[töff]

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE (cross-post)

[töff]

You guys think I have forgotten this, huh. I have NOT! I just ain't worked on it, being all swamped etc. I reallllllllly want get back to this and finish it in time to include it in my little magazine, with the last chapter of the Tour Of The Solar System.

Speaking of which ... I just shipped the 3rd of the 5 chapters. Has anybody read any of it?

1 Titan http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/Dar..._One_Titan.pdf
2 Rings http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/Dar..._Of_Saturn.pdf
3 Io http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/Dar...sion_Klish.pdf
4 Ceres [working!]
5 Mars [working!]

[töff]

Planetary Rings

When last I left off, I think I was working on the planetary rings. Recently I took two good-sized steps forward on this little map project.

First, I realized that ring systems change significantly over time. This is 13,000 years in the future, so I do not have to match the current appearances of the ring systems of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. I will match Saturn's, though, because it is familiar and characteristic to modern viewers ... and, plus, I already have a bitmap for the color & transparency ... but, yay, I don't have to find actual accurate bitmaps for the others. I can just wonk them up in Photoshop. That's gonna save time & number-crunching!

Second, I had a method for converting the color & xpncy maps into radils (rings) for rendering, but I since developed a better method, inspired by an offhand comment on some old newsgroup. Anyway, here's how I am gonna make rings.

=== PROCEDURE ===

You have to have color & xpncy maps for your rings. I don't remember where I found Saturn's color map on the web, but it was out there. The map has to be scaled from the center of the planet out to however far a radius you want the rings to be visible to. In my map, it worked out to 9,000 pixels, nice high resolution. The bitmap only has to be, I guess, in theory, one pixel high, but I'm scared of single pixels so I cropped it to 10 pixels high. Call me crazy.

(The sizes screw up embedding the images on this page, so I will just put links ...)
http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/rings/07_Saturn.jpg
http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/rin...Ring_Color.jpg
http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/rin...Ring_Xpncy.jpg
http://links.mysteryandmagic.com/rin...y_Brighter.jpg

Next, fire up your 3D app, which if it ain't http://autodesk.com/3dsmax then maybe this procedure won't work. Awesome software -- high learning curve, monstrous price tag, some funny quirks, but awesome. End plug, and no I don't work for them. Anyway ...

1) Start with a sphere. The radius should be the edge of the ring system as measured from the center of the planet.



2) Make a material with your two bitmaps: diffuse color from your color bitmap, and transparency (opacity, whatever your app calls it) from your transparency bitmap. ... Notice that the color bitmap for Saturn has black where there's no rings, because there's no color there, of course. This tends to darken the rings overall, which I compensated for by brightening the xpncy bitmap. It'd probably work better (or be more accurate, anyway) if I brightened the color bitmap or just used a nice pale tan/orange/beig stripy color bitmap without any black in it at all, because the xpncy bitmap is where you really want your "empty space" data. But whatever, this works fine. Do NOT add ambient/self-color to the material, if you want the planet to cast a shadow on the rings (which you do want, trust me).



3) Apply the material to the sphere using a PLANAR uvw map.



4) Depending on your geometry, you might need to rotate the uvw map. You want it on the top of the sphere.



5) Like an infinite god, smash the sphere down flat to zero vertical dimensionality.



6) Stick your planet in the middle (this one's not to scale), add a sun light and some stars in the backdrop, and render!





So now I'm off to make some ring-system bitmaps for the other gas giants ... and then I can move on to some new part of this sprawling project!

[RPMiller]

That is really sweet! Thank you for the tutorial.

[Redrobes]

Thats cool - nice pic at end too.

Interesting refresher on the old scale astro problem. Did you catch my silly vid about real planet scale in our system...
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4567

I don't recommend anyone doing anything bigger than a planet and immediate satellites of at a real scale.

[töff]

Don't talk to me about scale ... It's been the largest spear in my side for doing a map of The LATTICE.

[Steel General]

That looks really good.